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Sunday, November 30, 2014

Alexis Ohanian: How to make a splash in social media

During his
TED talk at TEDIndia in 2009, Reddit.com co-founder Alexis Ohanian highlighted
a number of empowering truths about the today’s internet. He also talked about
how emerging professionals can enact social change through social media. The
subject of Ohanian’s speech was an article that went up on Reddit’s front page,
involving the environmental rights group Greenpeace
demonstrating against the Japanese government’s latest whale-hunting endeavor. A
proposed solution to the conflict was for Greenpeace to put a tracker on one of
the whales, for which they would need a name. A polling process ensued, ending
in a near-unanimous vote for the name “Mr. Splashy Pants”.After some reluctance on the part of
Greenpeace (which was met by the unbending will of the people), “Mr. Splashy
Pants” was the name granted to the tracked whale. Greenpeace was also
successful in their campaign to stop the Japanese government from hunting
whales off their coasts.

Among the
plethora of subject matter present in Ohanian’s talk, 2 points stood out the
most as beneficial to me:

·Open-Ended
Messages- Ohanian expressed the importance of being okay with not being in
control of how people perceive your message. The situation between Greenpeace
and the Japanese government was serious issue. Reddit chose to approach such an
issue with a combination of levity and interaction with their community. This
ultimately accomplished the primary objective and fostered a sense of
empowerment throughout Reddit’s online community, as it was their contributions
that made the triumph possible. Questions with no right or wrong answer will
usually yield more valuable information than a pointed one.

·Inclusion-
Reddit.com’s format allows contributors to post stories for the approval or
disapproval of their peers. The popular stories end up on Reddit’s “front
page”. Allowing the audience to have input on different aspects of the user
experience benefits content creators in 2 major ways. First, including the
audience in decision-making transfers accountability for overall appeal of the
subject matter to the community. Secondly, since creators have a direct link
with their consumer base, the community can then become the think tank/beta
group for new products and/or services.